Goat stomping: For when Goats go Bad

Our weather in Southern Arizona is beautiful right now. It fills me with inspiration, but did I mention I'm a little sick? Yeah, not too bad though. My Momma has it bad. She just loves bragging. "Oh, I'm miserable! I wish I were dead! It's hot in here! I can't breath! I'll contaminate the milk in the morning! I can't stop sneezing! I can't sleep! It's cold in here! I'm dying!"


Some people have all the luck. It's nice and cool out this evening- even with the sun shining- a brisk 74 degrees. Brisk.
Though the sun is in my eyes a bit, it's still great. I don't know what I will be making as a vegetable tonight. We're having pot roast with baked potatoes and "pot roasted" onions. We're out of garlic. That's a real shame, right?



To be blunt, I've stomped my share of goat flesh in my time. A "share" isn't much. But I've never lost a fight, unless I was ordered to surrender by my parents. That rarely happens in the middle of a fight, it's more of a "just don't go in there." thing. You understand.

Today I got in a fight with a goat.
Goats have a queen - no king - just an "alpha" female. Usually the oldest, sometimes not. They "play fight" to find out who's ranked over who. Dallas is our herd queen. Lightning (her daughter) is trying to be herd queen, but she's still a bit off. Dallas is...a horrible herd queen.

Did you know, goats go through different levels of idiocy- when they're born, they're smarter than when they're fully grown. Weird, huh? Additionally, once they go through pregnancy, they lose any semblence of that little baby goat you fell in love with (I never fell in love with a goat). In short, they turn into jerks- it's really quite strange.


Dallas sometimes is a real jerk- attacking my mom (and me, for that matter) when one of us goes into the goat pen. For about a year ('03) my parents accused me of Goat H8 (hate, H8, Heh-eight, get it? H8 = hate) and Goat Abuse. Until my mom and dad started getting attacked by the thankless dweeb. Then they understood why I disliked her so much. My mom was so devastated the first time Dallas attacked her she ran inside, jumped into her bed and "cried and cried."

The only way to snap her out of it is to show her that humans are better than her, and there's no way at all to fight back. We accomplish this by knocking the goat on their side and holding them on their back for about 10 minutes; this shows them any time they wanna brawl, there's gonna be hell to pay for them. We're at this stage right now, and she kicked my mom yesterday (big ole' bruise). But my mom had mercy on her.

There's one thing I've learned from playing Red Alert. In fact, it's on the back of the box. "Surrender is not an option."

So I went to separate the baby goats, innocently- you have to do that, because the babies nurse in the daytime, and you separate them so at night the mother produces milk for you to drink. Cocoa (a goat) is currently the only goat who's "on the teat," and she's a little frightened of people. I stepped into the pen to get her, and Dallas starts right away with her contentious 'defense' of 'her turf.'

I fight her by pushing on her head until her legs collapse/she moves away. It shows I'm stronger than her. I pushed her back about thirty feet, then she ran back twenty feet (to her preferred battleground?) and reared up on me- which consists of standing on her back legs and attempting to headbutt me. I've never, ever seen them do this successfully, even to each other. They're naturally inaccurate, I guess. But this elevates the fight, and that's my queue to lay the smackdown on her.

I got on her left side, and grabbed her front-left and back-left legs with my right and left hands, respectively. If I lost you, I'm currently on my stomach, with my arms crossed (I grabbed the legs with the wrong arms), trying to keep her from breaking free of my grasp. Once she stopped struggling, I moved my front-left leg hand to the front-right leg. Then once she stopped struggling there I straightened my arms out real fast. If I lost you again, I'm currently on my knees on her left side holding her front-right and rear-right legs with my left and right hands, respectively.

Then, the only step left... I pushed her gently until she careened onto her side. She tried to flip over, but I grabbed her leg and rolled her onto her back. I kept her there for about 7 minutes, whilst she scraped her eye against the ground (a goats natural defense!).


Once I let her up, she...well, you ever seen the second Matrix movie, where Neo flies away during the fight with the Smiths, and they kinda look around like "dang?" Well, that's what she did. Then I had to get past her to get out, and she just moved out of my way without a violent thought. This should last until tomorrow, and I'll have to stomp her again, and after that, there's a 50% chance I'll have to do it again. If it persists, we'll have to shoot her. I am...not joking.



"Be careful Steven, don't run, you're gonna slip on the water, Steven"
"Heheh hehhe! Bang bang! Bang bang!"
"(Bang bang!)"
"Yeah you didn't do it right."



"...Hey Johnny...Jooohnny... it's the ventilation monster comin' to get you...I'm gonna eat your brains...I'm gonna come out and get you...I'm hiding in here...Hehehehehehe!"